Reel to Real

Reel to Real was an unofficial open-source animatronic simulator game that succeeded the prior Rock-afire Replay , focusing on Chuck E. Cheese animatronics, that lasted from July 24, 2022 to December 9th, 2022- where it received a Cease & Desist from CEC Entertainment.

History

Pivot From Replay

Reel to Real started as the Rock-afire Explosion simulator Rock-afire Replay , developed from August 24, 2020 to January 5th, 2021, where it was publicly removed after pressures from Creative Engineering. It would continue development in private, alongside a side-game using the same codebase publically released as the Five Nights at Freddy's fangame 'Faz-Anim', throughout 2021 and 2022.
In late 2021 plans were made to strip out Creative Engineering characters even from the private build as to not stir the company if anything were to leak. This also shifted the development into exclusively working on Chuck E. Cheese and Pizza Time Theatre related characters, as at the time CEC had not interacted with its fan community in almost a decade, making it seem to be the safer option for a fan-release. Replay already included a single set of Cyberamics from one of its last updates, and its base Rock-afire mechs could be repurposed into the 3-Stage characters, just as it had been done during Concept Unification . Creative Engineering also suggested multiple times for Replay to be repurposed into either a CEC or FNaF simulator, which it eventually had become both. The removal of CEI assets would come on September 10th, 2021.

Rename

During Replay's private development it went under the name "Pizza Time Player", with the tagline "Vintage Animatronic Program Emulator". On December 5, 2021, the testing group suggested multiple new names to potentially rename the software. These were "Rat Reels", "Virtual Reels", "Rat Replay", "Pizza Player", "Pizza Time Theater", "Vintage Tape Theatre", "Robotic Animation Emulator", "Cheese Tapes Virtualized", "Animatronic Tapes Virtualized", "Robot Replay", "Replay Resurrection", "Animatronic Archive", "Robot Reanimator", and "Project Cheese", before suddenly coming to Reel to Real with unanimous approval.

Early Teasers

The first teasers of Reel to Real would come on December 10th, 2021 in the Pizza Time Techs Discord server (Now the Cheese-E-Pedia server), first in the form of a darkened screenshot of a fully finished Cyberamic Chuck with the game's new logo. After discussion and excitement developed over the image, a second teaser showing a clearer view released. The following day a video showing the Warblettes playing official Pizza Time Theatre data was shown, though it was not known at the time it wasn't fan-programmed.
Around that same time, multiple in-development posts of Reel to Real's models would be posted to The 64th Gamer's Artstation, which users would later find.⁽²⁾ On March 2, 2022, they would post a tease of the in-development 1-Stage on the Cheese-E-Pedia (Then known as Pizza Time Techs) Discord server after a user asked if the game was being worked on.
On April Fools of 2022, a fake Reel to Real trailer was uploaded to The 64th Gamer's channel. There it would show off official signals of Party Place in the then latest build of the game only for a brief moment- before cutting to compressed gameplay of the Roblox experience 'CEC Phase 3 Colerain' for the remainder of the video. In the description was an encrypted code that lead to a secret video actually showing off the entire showtape segment, which was found shortly after the video's premiere.⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾
On July 10th, 2022, a Reel to Real watch party would be held in the Cheese-E-Pedia Discord server showing off the game and its showtapes. On the 12th a GameJolt page for the game would appear, and on the 13th a dedicated Reel to Real channel would open in the server. By this point beta testers of the game would begin posting photos, videos, and custom showtapes from their builds. 64th would also confirm the game being set to release within '1-2 weeks' after deciding that fully finishing the game to release would take too long.⁽⁴⁾⁽⁵⁾
On July 16th the first video devlog of the game, titled 'Reel to Real - Chuck E. Cheese Showtape Simulator Devlog #1' would release on YouTube, going over the game's goals, features, and a short development section on Studio C Chuck and the editor. Two days later Reel to Real would be used to premiere never before seen signals of the CEC September 1990 show running on a 3-Stage, which only would have shown up at a small number of locations for a short period of time. A similar premiere for the cancelled Family Times song would be on the 21st. Devlog 2 would release on the 22nd- going over more of Studio C's progress. At the same time, the game would begin having its assets cleaned up- with any mentions of the Rock-afire Explosion being removed.^(6)(7)(8)(9)

Release

On July 24th, 2022, at 2:39pm, the game would release on Gamejolt as version 1.58, with a VR build following shortly after. Multiple streams in the voice channel would begin for the game. At 5:36pm the source code would release on GitHub. On the 25th a Linux build of 1.59 would release exclusively to the CEP Discord server. The 26th would see the video announcement for the release drop.^(10)(11) Hype for the game before and after release was constant, with a couple thousand of messages sent in the Reel to Real channel of the CEP Discord each day.

Post Release

Over the coming months many game versions, devlogs, showtape uploads, and more were released. By August 20th's update the game would almost have its entire 3-Stage cast done, alongside progress on Studio C and enhancements to the game engine. Updates would cease until November 19th, where the Alpha 1.63 release would drop titled the 'Coming Home Update'. Multiple massive changes to the game would take place- revealed in a devlog video just before the drop, including a complete overhaul of the lighting engine to use the new at the time 'H-Trace' plugin, a revamped title screen inspired by the design of Halo: Reach, and a near full map of the first Pizza Time Theatre location. This map would use recently discovered blueprints of the location to recreate it in full, alongside using aerial views to construct accurate surrounding buildings. This location would also include the first Pasqually animatronic. A map of the second Pizza Time Theatre would also take from similar blueprints, though in a much more unfinished state. Instead of all parts of the game being in a single level, maps were now separated out and selectable through the title screen, including settings for spawn locations and time of day. Cosmetics for 3-Stage latex mask Pasqually and 3-Stage plastic mask Chuck were also added. Custom art by RayStarKitty for the update would depict a Reel to Real variant of Chuck based off early Pizza Time Theatre art- with a custom rainbow vest. This variant was planned to be used for promotional material going forward. Alongside this release, a Patreon would be set up for 64th's general projects, but among its benefits would be getting teasers and early access to Reel to Real development builds before public release.

Cease & Desist

On December 9th, 2022, 1:47pm, The 64th Gamer would be sent a cease and desist email by David A. Deck of the CEC Legal department. The email would state "To Whom It May Concern, Attached please find an important communication for your immediate attention."⁽¹²⁾ The letter would state that the devlog videos on 64th's channel were in violation of the Chuck E. Cheese trademark, and that they were to be taken down. This would be due to 'a number of reported instances of actual confusion'. Further correspondence would indicate CEC legal was unaware of the game's actual release months prior- nor any of its Patreon related benefits. Despite this, the game and all of its videos would be immediately taken down- and development stopped. A quick release build of Alpha 1.64, which wasn't due till around the end of the month, would be thrown onto the CEP Discord, alongside the Github updated to the last known commit for a short time for users to download before also being removed.
The final update would include a map of the San Jose Fontaine Rd. location, also known as the Tully store. Small updates to Cyberamic sizes, the 3-Stage's painted building props being updated, and full cosmetics for the 3-Stage Moon were the last changes.

Post C&D

On the 14th, David would reply back to 64th's emails about the letter.

"Sorry for the delay and thank you for the quick response. This issue is really any unauthorized use of our intellectual property (e.g., name, likenesses, show tapes, etc.) whether that’s as part of software or any other way.
On a possible good note, Melissa McLeanas, our Vice President of Global Licensing, Media and Branded Entertainment Development, would like to speak with you concerning a possible positive arrangement between you and CEC. Please let me know if you are open to having a call with her. Let me know.
Thank you!"

Correspondance after this would be sparse until January of 2023, where a call with Melissa would be scheduled for the 30th of that month. On the call Reel to Real would be pitched as a meaningful piece of software for CEC to use to sell its back catalog of Showtapes, which had not seen any sort of release prior. It would also be beneficial to CEC's current wave of retro merchandise releases- which later on would be shown to increase greatly over the coming years.
Many aspects of the game were explained in detail and discussed. While Melissa wasn't fond of the current software's ability to program custom shows by its users, she was impressed by its prospects to be retooled to how it was pitched, and set up a planned meeting with David McKillips to show off the game. 64th was told to give any materials needed for Melissa to pitch the game in the meeting, and it was agreed upon that 64th would make a demo reel and a pitch document for it.
It was additionally discussed that even if Reel to Real wouldn't go through after the meeting, 64th may be signed on to a project that Melissa couldn't reveal until an NDA was signed, which was planned to be the first thing done after the meeting. The pitch materials would be sent later that week, but no further correspondence would ever be sent back- even after multiple follow-ups.⁽¹³⁾